Anton’s hand is made of guilt, no muscle or bone. He has two clinically depressed fingers and an angry thumb

This work-in-progress project, which has been in gestation since 2019  is based on a poignant and very personal story and experience: the death and disappearance of my close friend, photojournalist Anton Hammerl, during the 2011 Libyan war. Developed  in Libya and neighbouring countries, this  project responds to Anton Hammerl’s disappearance/death through a speculative examination of the circumstances surrounding his demise as well as a reflection on the decisive but paradoxical role that photography has played in conflict zones.

Drawing on the writings by Georges Didi-Huberman (Images in Spite of All)  and Georges Perec (La Disparition),  the project seeks to develop new representational techniques to interrogate conflict and enable innovative approaches to respond to war, photographic ethics, bereavement,  trauma and missing persons.

Both Didi-Huberman and Perec’s writings are rooted in and confront the most disturbing historical realities: the disappearance/loss of a parent or a people during the Holocaust. Whilst each author addresses the notion of ‘unimaginable’ horror and loss  in distinct  ways, how we remember and imagine—how we use images and words and imbue them with the trace of lost lives is of paramount importance for both authors.

In my work reality and imagined reality collide overlap and blur.  Through a meta-representational approach that looks beyond the referent – which I term ‘impossible document’ – the project seeks to develop a visual lexicon that can be used as a representational and pedagogic tool to interrogate conflict as well as the spectacle of photojournalism.

Like Perec and Didi-Huberman’s writings, this story too is warped by absences. It talks of the difficulty of documenting, testifying, witnessing, remembering, honouring and imagining in times of war and conflict.

This project was developed with support from the Foundation for Sciences and Technology (Portugal) and the Archive of Modern Conflict.